Inspiration
What it does
How we built it
Challenges we ran into
Accomplishments that we're proud of
What we learned
What's next for RESPOND
In September 2024, the Bagmati River flooded Kathmandu, and power cuts took mobile towers offline just as rescue teams needed to coordinate. We were struck by how much rescue still depends on a working network. When signal drops, teams lose track of who has been checked, which roads are open and where people are. We wanted to build something that keeps working exactly when the infrastructure doesn’t. What we learnt We learnt that you don’t need constant communication to coordinate if everyone starts with the same data and follows the same rules: each device can work out the same plan independently. Merging knowledge safely was harder than we expected. We designed person statuses so they only ever move upwards, which means updates can arrive in any order without conflicts. We also learnt to be honest about trade-offs: without communication, some effort gets duplicated, so we measure it rather than hide it. Finally, agreeing a shared contract early let four people build in parallel. What we used We used React, TypeScript and Vite, with Leaflet and real OpenStreetMap street data. n8n would then notify news outlets and councils
Built With
- react
- typescript
- vite
